Ghana begs for extra power from Ivory Coast

The Deputy Minister of Power, John Jinapor, as well as bosses of the Volta River Authority (VRA) and Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo), were in Ivory Coast last week for talks for the country’s western neighbours to supply extra power, TV3 has gathered.

This is to augment the deficit created by the shutdown of FPSO Kwame Nkrumah and reduction in gas supply from Nigeria.

Speaking to TV3’s Rabiu Alhassan on Monday, Engineer Isaac Kirk Koffi, the Chief Executive Officer of VRA, said Ivory Coast expressed willingness to help Ghana at least for the next two weeks after the talks.

“Over the weekend, they were able to give us enough and weekdays [during offpeak] but peak hours they reduce it.”

Ghanaians expressed fears about the return of erratic power supply - popularly known as dumsor - after GRIDCo announced the shutdown of the floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) at the Jubilee Fields and the damage of West African gas pipelines in Nigeria.

Ing. Koffi allayed those fears by indicating that enough crude oil have been secured for the country’s major thermal plants.

“We have made adequate preparations to buy crude oil. We got almost a million barrels. We have discharged 300,000 barrels for our plants in Tema and we are on our way to discharge 400,000 barrels for our plants in Takoradi [and] the extra 200,000 will be discharged again in Tema.”